When Todd Nelson came [to Oilers], he introduced a tradition. After a practice, we form a ring, and someone selects three stars of the session. And the first star – whoever took it easy in training. He gets to run a lap in full gear.

So, it’s my turn to hand out stars. Ben Scrivens is 3rd. Taylor Hall is 2nd. And the 1st star, with help from Andrew Ference, I give to the veteran Matt Hendricks. His eyes just popped out: “Kid, are you crazy?”

Hendricks runs the lap. We laughed, I apologized. Matt just nodded, “No worries, it’s all good.” So I skate for another half hour, return to the locker-room, and my shoes… the soles are glued together! I also saw he tried to nail them to the wall, but didn’t have enough time.

I spent two hours trying to pry the shoes apart. Nobody helped. In the end, I ripped them apart so that one shoe had two soles, the other none. That’s how I went home. And Matt said, “Don’t mess with veterans!”